So normally I do my yearly wrap up blog on the 31st. I want to get every last moment in to show how I reached and smashed my goals but this past year was a no goal year so that's not necessary.
So how did I do with my no goals?
Pretty well.
Brent's guess at the end of last year is that I would make it until early summer before I gave up and set goals. And he might have been right if it had been a normal year. But 2020 helped me along with my goallessnes. It helped all of us along with that. Plans? Oh no, I don't think so. Routines? Let's try again. Focus? On what?
So I wrote some; this will make 110 blogs, a lot of those are grief chronicles and pandemic prose. My fiction output was almost kaput, only 15 pieces and zero tries at submitting.
I read some but I had a hard time concentrating. Right now I'm trying to finish a book I started in 2020 so I don't carry over a half count for 2021. I will end the year at 76 books, 77 if I finish the one I'm only partway into. But the trick will be if in another year I remember any of what I read this year. I have a feeling a lot of it went in and slid right back out.
I gained some weight, then I gained some more to keep that company. Ended up 8.6 pounds after losing some at the beginning of last year so probably another 5 on top of that is really the pandemic/grief weight. Eek!
I lost some fitness. Okay, I lost a lot of fitness! The gym closed in March and then when it reopened we didn't really feel it was a good idea to go back. So my biceps are not popping. My shoulders aren't rocking and my back is basic. It's also why the weight I gained seems like a lot more to me. But I can still fit into at least two pairs of jeans. It might not be pretty...but they zip.
That big thick planner that I bought and thought even without goals it might be handy? I didn't even look at it from like June to last week. Did a mass reading of all of those inspirational quotes and noticed all of the events that I crossed out and realized that's probably why I stopped looking at it. It's kind of depressing to see all of your plans just disappear.
Which fits. I look at the past year and am not thrilled with the outcome; a lot of things just disappeared. But I can't really blame my lack of goals, I mean honestly, it was not something that we were prepared for. It being 2020. Just all of it from about March onward was completely new.
I'm glad I went with no goals because I didn't feel like I was screwing up by not completing them. And there is really no way I would have completed any of them. It's been said so much that we are all sick of the word, but it was an unprecedented year. So I'm glad I went with no goals. I'm glad I was able to just accept the year for what it was as much as I could. Because fighting against last year would have been even worse.
I know we are all excited about 2021. Gotta love a new start. But it's not going to be better. Not for awhile. We are in for another surge of cases. More deaths. More sickness. We haven't even begun to see what the economic fallout is going to be. Our political situation is still in turmoil. I was reading an article today about an Oregon group that is planning on defying all of Governor Brown's orders, they aren't violent, they want you to know that, because you will probably get the wrong impression by the fact that they are going to do it with armed guards. And they call the left radical.
We seem to always be just a spark away from an explosion. And I think there will be a lot of them over the next stretch.
Trump has done his best to cripple and undermine the incoming administration so I don't see anything in Washington going well. And because I don't see it going well right now I think there is good chance that 2024 will see the strong coalition that was needed to get Trump the fuck out fall apart which will open the door for whatever worse thing the Republicans put up. Because it can get worse. A Trump vileness with competence. That would be worse. And the Republican party has decided that deplorable is awfully comfortable so they are going to stay there awhile. Oh yes, I hear you, NOT ALL OF US ARE...but all of you are comfortable with it. At this point in time you have to own that shit. It's your shit. Deal with it however you feel you must, but pretending it doesn't make you stink as well isn't working. You don't have to wallow in the cesspool, you can leave, but if you stay it's who you are.
And the democrats will do what the democrats do and fight with each other so much that nothing changes. Which is what part of the democrats are comfortable with, after all, not the infighting, the status quo. And part want so much change that they will never be comfortable with incremental change. And those of us screaming for actual, realistic, incremental change with an end goal of FIXING ALL OF THIS SHIT will just keep screaming into the void. Or we will just get quieter and quieter. And again, I see disaster in 2024 because of all of this.
I hope I'm wrong. I would love to be wrong. I would love to see Biden pull a miracle out of his hat. I would love to see AOC and Pelosi join hands and call Red Rover Red Rover Send Justice Right Over and see them hold that line and make those changes. Equity, justice, real systemic change...ah...I'm hopeful. But only in that little can't squash an optimist piece of me. The realist part of me is doing that Denise Face thing...
So 2020 was my goalless but not aimless year that turned into goalless, maybe a little aimless, just make it through this year.
What will we see for 2021?
I don't know....but you bet your ass I'm setting some goals!
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